November 21, 2003 --
GOTHIKA
Berry, Berry bad.
Running time: 98 minutes. Rated R (violence, nudity, gore,
profanity). At the E-Walk, the Chelsea, the Union Square,
others.
THE conventional wisdom is that an Academy Award-winning actress has 18
months to find another worthwhile role - or risk running afoul of the
so-called "curse of Oscar," like Hilary Swank and many others whose careers
have failed to blossom.
Since Halle Berry won a well-deserved Oscar for "Monster's Ball," she's
squandered her time in undemanding (if well-paying) roles in "Die Another Day"
and "X-2."
Now she delivers the year's most utterly over-the-top performance in the
ludicrous supernatural thriller "Gothika," her solo starring debut.
"Gothika" starts promisingly, even if Berry is the least plausible
on-screen shrink since Jennifer Lopez in "The Cell."
Her Dr. Miranda Grey works in a dark, hulking prison psychiatric ward run
by her husband, Douglas (Charles S. Dutton).
But Miranda's life, and the movie, go seriously wrong one dark, rainy night
when she encounters a mutilated girl who bursts into flame.
Three days later, Miranda wakes up in a cell at her own prison and is
informed she's been accused of savagely murdering her husband with an ax -
something she has no memory of.
Even if you could buy the old B-movie chestnut that a shrink accused of
murder would end up in her former place of employment - where she's attacked
by one of her own former patients (Penelope Cruz, who gives Berry competition
in the worst-actress honors) - the movie spins further and further into
coincidence and incoherence.
Not only is Miranda being treated by a close friend and would-be lover
(Robert Downey Jr.) and being defended by her lawyer dad, but the crime is
being investigated by her late husband's best friend, the sheriff (John
Carroll Lynch).
Right.
Plus, it turns out that the mutilated girl just happens to be related to
the prison's warden (Bernard Hill).
Uh huh.
Director Mathieu Kassovitz - a Frenchman best known in this country for
playing the love interest in "Amelie," which he did not direct - seems totally
oblivious to how silly this all gets.
He's also seemingly deaf to howlers concocted by screenwriter Sebastian
Gutierrez, including such deathless lines as "he opened me like a flower of
pain" and "the ability to repress is actually a vital survival tool."
Instead, Kassovitz encourages his cast - except for Downey, who alone seems
fully aware his red herring role, like the rest of this movie, is a crock - to
chew the scenery without restraint.
By the time Berry proclaimed, "I'm not deluded, I'm possessed," at a
preview screening, she was all but drowned out by laughter.
